I appreciate your clarification. We're getting sidetracked here but I don't think the Westboro people, for instance, are dumb. They have very specific goals in mind and they're working to fulfill them. They're super shitty and vile goals, but they're not being stupid.

Whose word are you taking as gospel that the Westboro pipple actually believe those things?

Also, today's creepy thought on the way to the pub:

Spoiler:

Thanos has decided that rather than wiping out half the Earth's human population, chosen by lottery, he's going to wipe out half the Earth's human population, chosen by someone chosen by lottery. He chose you. You must now nominate 50% of the Earth's human population for eradication, time and manner of death of your choice. All their deaths must occur within 168 hours of now. You have 24 hours to make your choices. Get writing.

Sableagle wrote:Whose word are you taking as gospel that the Westboro pipple actually believe those things?

Also, today's creepy thought on the way to the pub:

Spoiler:

Thanos has decided that rather than wiping out half the Earth's human population, chosen by lottery, he's going to wipe out half the Earth's human population, chosen by someone chosen by lottery. He chose you. You must now nominate 50% of the Earth's human population for eradication, time and manner of death of your choice. All their deaths must occur within 168 hours of now. You have 24 hours to make your choices. Get writing.

Yeah, that's nightmare fuel, alright.

You do realise that...

Spoiler:

To name 3.5 billion people in 24 hours you'd have to name more than 40,000 per second (40,509 and change if it's exactly 3.5 billion and exactly 24 hours). Just in the time it takes you to comprehend the situation, you're hundreds of thousands of names behind. If you named one person per second, it would take around 110 years to name half the world's population, never mind choosing time and manner of death...

I figured you didn't have to nominate them one by one, but you could describe the desired group in a systemic matter, e.g. "sort everyone according to these criteria and select the first 50% from that list".

Pfhorrest wrote:I figured you didn't have to nominate them one by one, but you could describe the desired group in a systemic matter, e.g. "sort everyone according to these criteria and select the first 50% from that list".

Yes. You could name "NAMBLA, the NRA, ISIS, all paid-up members of UKIP, all direct descendants of all of Vladimir Putin's great-grandparents, the entire population of Bradford, everyone who's texted while driving in the last 400 days, Mr D. P. Depledge, formerly of Leeds Grammar School, the richest 10% of the US population, everyone in favour of female genital mutilation, everyone who voted for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, 20% of the male population of China by lottery, whoever the heck left his or her dog's poo on my doorstep, the cIRA, the crews of all whaling ships, Clifford Dimba of Zambia, a council of village elders, everyone who likes Top Gear, another village council, all the gold-spammers in my current MMO, whoever keeps sending me emails claiming to be from Santander bank in Brasil, all tobacco-smokers, the least intelligent 10% of the population of India ... "

Then you'd have to nominate another two billion or so ... and then you'd have all their deaths on your conscience.

Zohar wrote:Your point about religion is absolute hateful bullshit. As for smart people sometimes doing dumb or bad things? Sure. This was a bit over the top.

I should have been more precise, I made an assumption that you would get my point.

There are smart people that believe women should always be subservient to their husbands. That soliders dying proves god hates f#$%.

I was alluding to specific examples. FYI the Westboro family members are highly educated lawyers who know the law and the bible better than 99% of us.

So, I'm sorry if my intent wasn't obvious, but I stand by my point about smart people and dumb ideas. I guess we just disagree how plausible Thanos's goal was.

Yeah, nah, I think if Phelps knew the law really well he wouldn't have been disbarred.

He knew the law so well he was able to question a witness for a full week in court. His disbarment had nothing to do with his knowledge of the law it had to do with him being a horrible human being who lied under oath and got caught. Again, he was a very intelligent person who believed something dumb... like the argument in this thread about Thanos.

Angua wrote:Pretty sure Thanos did it randomly so that it would be less biased than the awful list you just posted.

I'm not condoning Thanos' plan or saying it was a good idea at all here, but good grief.

He definitely did it somewhat randomly but it was also somewhat directed. If the whole universe was done randomly it could very well have wiped out entire planets just through random distribution. I imagine that effect goes down to even the city level, else even on earth you'd have whole cities disappearing just due to random variance. Seemed to be something like "half the people of each population center" without any explicit definition of how big that is.

I don't know how it would act on a universe-level but on Earth I highly doubt a single city would get completely destroyed. The odds of a town of even 30 people to be completely wiped out are around one in a billion. For a planet of millions to be entirely wiped out is ridiculously improbable, but of course life in the MCU seems to be incredibly abundant, so I don't know how those balance out.

Zohar wrote:I don't know how it would act on a universe-level but on Earth I highly doubt a single city would get completely destroyed. The odds of a town of even 30 people to be completely wiped out are around one in a billion. For a planet of millions to be entirely wiped out is ridiculously improbable, but of course life in the MCU seems to be incredibly abundant, so I don't know how those balance out.

Anyway that's just a bit of statistics, that's all.

Yeah, for any small enough fraction of the total population of the cosmos, you can approximate the odds by saying each individual has an independent 50% chance of being eliminated. So over a population of 7 billion, you'll be off by more than a quarter million (6 sigma) from 3.5 billion survivors a little under 2 times in a billion - so it'll happen a lot among the ~2*10^22 Earth-like planets in the universe - roughly 40 trillion times. There's roughly even odds of there being some planet among that number where the error is at least 400,000, and less than a one in ten billion chance that there's any planet anywhere in the universe where the death toll from 7 billion is outside the range 3,499,500,000-3,500,500,000 (half a million either way).

As for wiping out an entire planetary population measured in the billions, there's a better chance of Thanos spontaneously dissolving into dust before snapping his fingers than of a planetary population being entirely eliminated by chance.

For smaller population groups, if you assume there are ~10^32 people in total across the entire universe (average population per Earth-like planet ~5 billion) then if they're divided into non-overlapping groups of 100 people, you'd expect about 1 group to have no survivors, and about 1 group to all survive. Groups of 110, and you'd expect to need to fingersnap in a thousand such universes before getting one group entirely wiped out. Every ten people added to a group makes it a thousand times more likely that at least one person in the group will survive.

More spoilery statistics:

Spoiler:

People have pointed out that it's a little fishy that all 6 original Avengers survived. The odds of any 6 individuals all surviving by chance is 1/64, or 1.5625%, so it's a bit of a plot hole if it was supposedly by pure chance.

Of course, if all the (surviving) Guardians had survived, that would also have looked fishy, and it only takes a couple more roughly equally significant patterns that could have happened instead and the chances of something fishy happening get over 5%, so it's only significant that the original Avengers survived if you consider that particular group to be exceptionally significant.

Zohar wrote:I don't know how it would act on a universe-level but on Earth I highly doubt a single city would get completely destroyed. The odds of a town of even 30 people to be completely wiped out are around one in a billion. For a planet of millions to be entirely wiped out is ridiculously improbable, but of course life in the MCU seems to be incredibly abundant, so I don't know how those balance out.

Anyway that's just a bit of statistics, that's all.

From the direct finger snap, sure.

That said, the resulting disasters seem likely to boost the death toll in localized areas. One industrial accident or airliner crash due to an unfortunate confluence of disappearances could be rough on a neighborhood.

Basically, you get to extrapolate everything the extreme Christian sorts believe would happen in a rapture scenario, same same.

As an aside, the computational power for this must be fairly intense. Large universe, and you've got to distinguish the boundaries between a person and their equipment. Generally something intrinsic to the character was treated as part of them, but something they were holding, no. That might be overthinking the scenario, though.

Spoilery discussion of specifics:

Spoiler:

In particular, Bucky's arm counts as part of him, but he drops the gun.

For the "six originals survive", only five of them survive by chance. Stark lives only because of Strange's deal with Thanos. Given that this was clearly what Strange was angling for, and it was their only chance in a very large number to get him to survive...it appears he would not have survived any other timeline. Ergo, by random chance, 5/6 make it. Still improbable, somewhat but much less so.

If you're looking for "one coherent group mostly survives", that hits the realm of decently probable.

Zohar wrote:I don't know how it would act on a universe-level but on Earth I highly doubt a single city would get completely destroyed. The odds of a town of even 30 people to be completely wiped out are around one in a billion. For a planet of millions to be entirely wiped out is ridiculously improbable, but of course life in the MCU seems to be incredibly abundant, so I don't know how those balance out.

Anyway that's just a bit of statistics, that's all.

From the direct finger snap, sure.

That said, the resulting disasters seem likely to boost the death toll in localized areas. One industrial accident or airliner crash due to an unfortunate confluence of disappearances could be rough on a neighborhood.

Basically, you get to extrapolate everything the extreme Christian sorts believe would happen in a rapture scenario, same same.

As an aside, the computational power for this must be fairly intense. Large universe, and you've got to distinguish the boundaries between a person and their equipment. Generally something intrinsic to the character was treated as part of them, but something they were holding, no. That might be overthinking the scenario, though.

Spoilery discussion of specifics:

Spoiler:

In particular, Bucky's arm counts as part of him, but he drops the gun.

For the "six originals survive", only five of them survive by chance. Stark lives only because of Strange's deal with Thanos. Given that this was clearly what Strange was angling for, and it was their only chance in a very large number to get him to survive...it appears he would not have survived any other timeline. Ergo, by random chance, 5/6 make it. Still improbable, somewhat but much less so.

If you're looking for "one coherent group mostly survives", that hits the realm of decently probable.

Yeah, there's going to be a lot of knock-on deaths - consider the number of links in the average supermarket supply chain, and the "bus number" (number of people who have to die in the same bus crash to break the company) of each link and there's going to be a large number of broken chains - which are going to lead to a supply crisis pretty quickly.

The distinction between a person (+clothing) and their equipment/the floor is fairly standard magic - and easier than deciding what counts as a "person" anyway - are chimps affected? Dolphins? White mice? Was Rocket even eligible to be erased?

And what happened to the planets Thanos had already reaped? Did they get a pass, or did they lose half their survivors?

On the spoilered stuff:

Spoiler:

If you're taking Stark out of the equation, you have to take him all the way out - it's then 5/5 surviving (~3%) not 5/6 (~10% - 9% exactly 5; 11% for 5+) which means it's still below the traditional arbitrary 5% threshold - even if you combine with the possibility of 6/6 Guardians surviving (which puts it around 4.7%)

I thought that perhaps the fact that the release of this movie in China was delayed a couple of weeks might hurt its revenue (due to piracy and spoilers and so forth), but lo and behold, the opening in China was ridicballs, making around 200 million USD in its opening weekend. It would appear the final worldwide gross will be something like 2 billion USD.

On the other hand, I think A:IW might not reach the domestic gross attained by Black Panther (which is still adding about 4 million per week domestically).

I really don't think it's a question of who's alive. Don't count out the dead.

I'm pretty sure that the main characters who were turned to dust (or were otherwise killed) are going to play a large role in their own resurrections, in the next movie. They certainly don't seem like the type to just sit around helplessly and wait to be rescued. Even if they're dead. We already know that there's a place for them to go, because Black Panther has already been there (in the last movie, thanks to the heart-shaped herb), and Gamora was there with Thanos in this one. If Thanos can move between these realms--probably due to the Soul Stone--who's to say he can't be dealt with somehow in the land of the dead?

Interestingly, people often seem to be children again in the land of the dead--e.g., Killmonger, Gamora--so there might be significant cost savings by replacing the big-name stars with unknown kids for long stretches of the next movie.

I really don't think it's a question of who's alive. Don't count out the dead.

I'm pretty sure that the main characters who were turned to dust (or were otherwise killed) are going to play a large role in their own resurrections, in the next movie. They certainly don't seem like the type to just sit around helplessly and wait to be rescued. Even if they're dead. We already know that there's a place for them to go, because Black Panther has already been there (in the last movie, thanks to the heart-shaped herb), and Gamora was there with Thanos in this one. If Thanos can move between these realms--probably due to the Soul Stone--who's to say he can't be dealt with somehow in the land of the dead?

Interestingly, people often seem to be children again in the land of the dead--e.g., Killmonger, Gamora--so there might be significant cost savings by replacing the big-name stars with unknown kids for long stretches of the next movie.

I agree.

Spoiler:

It seems a given that many of them will be revived. Given that the whole "in the soul stone" is potentially a thing, it's not improbable that everyone "dead" is there. Barring maybe Loki and Heimdall, of course, since they were not killed in any way associated with it.

I do interpret Thanos there with Gamora as being in the soul stone. No gauntlet, and when he snaps back to his regular body, that has the gauntlet just fine. I do think there's some soul stone/heart shaped herb connection. It's very similar. Not sure how much that helps, given that in BP, the supply of the herb was destroyed, but it's food for thought. Adam Warlock is indeed a potential conenction.

And, ultimately, I don't think they'd have made such a big deal about filming them simul/back to back if they weren't casting most everyone in both films.

rmsgrey wrote:On the spoilered stuff:

Spoiler:

If you're taking Stark out of the equation, you have to take him all the way out - it's then 5/5 surviving (~3%) not 5/6 (~10% - 9% exactly 5; 11% for 5+) which means it's still below the traditional arbitrary 5% threshold - even if you combine with the possibility of 6/6 Guardians surviving (which puts it around 4.7%)

Negative.

Spoiler:

Since we have future sight, it means that randomness is treated a little differently. As an aside, it is possible that the number of futures viewed is somehow combinatorically related to the number of deaths. I haven't actually crunched the numbers on this, but it seems possible that Strange is in fact seeing what combinations of living heroes can defeat him.

Anyways, at a minimum, it means that, determined randomly, without strange's future sight, 5/6 avengers would survive. He then alters the past so as to change this, but the actual outcome of the randomness is, best we can tell with the info we have, 5/6. Fairly lucky, but not obscenely so.

If he's viewing all possible combinations, however, and relying on some sort of butterfly effect to aim for a specific outcome, then randomness may not have anything to do with it at all. Time travel's a bitch that way. Particularly because it's also foreseeing the effect of future time travel. That's obscenely powerful.

If you're taking Stark out of the equation, you have to take him all the way out - it's then 5/5 surviving (~3%) not 5/6 (~10% - 9% exactly 5; 11% for 5+) which means it's still below the traditional arbitrary 5% threshold - even if you combine with the possibility of 6/6 Guardians surviving (which puts it around 4.7%)

Negative.

Spoiler:

Since we have future sight, it means that randomness is treated a little differently. As an aside, it is possible that the number of futures viewed is somehow combinatorically related to the number of deaths. I haven't actually crunched the numbers on this, but it seems possible that Strange is in fact seeing what combinations of living heroes can defeat him.

Anyways, at a minimum, it means that, determined randomly, without strange's future sight, 5/6 avengers would survive. He then alters the past so as to change this, but the actual outcome of the randomness is, best we can tell with the info we have, 5/6. Fairly lucky, but not obscenely so.

If he's viewing all possible combinations, however, and relying on some sort of butterfly effect to aim for a specific outcome, then randomness may not have anything to do with it at all. Time travel's a bitch that way. Particularly because it's also foreseeing the effect of future time travel. That's obscenely powerful.

Well...

Spoiler:

Strange saw (if we take his word for it) 14,000,605 possible futures, only one of which they won in. If that's primarily based on him save-scumming the finger-snap to pick the right combination of surviving heroes, then that's at least 24 heroes being considered with only one acceptable combination being found most of the way through an exhaustive search of all 16,777,216 possible sets of survivors for 24 heroes, or less than halfway through an exhaustive search of sets of survivors for 25+ heroes.

It seems more likely that Strange was looking at his own future actions rather than hacking the universe (or practicing prng seed manipulation) as that's the obvious thing for him to be able to control without needing added powers - he gets information; he acts on it and, as a result, other people's reactions to his actions lead to his foreseen future.

Either way, once you get something resembling a time-loop happening, you're no longer doing a simple coin-flip per person - instead, you have a feedback loop that makes some outcomes much less likely, while others become much more likely, regardless of their notional probabilities.

I think it's a combination, and he's searching through permutations of surviving heroes that his actions can in some way affect. It may be that he doesn't have sufficient choice of action to save any specific combination of people.

That said, he may have also stopped when he found the first combination that allowed saving the universe. Given that he seems overwhelmed, the search space is large, and he still has to execute the plan, that seems reasonable.

A few thoughts on the ramifications of Thanos' plan, I believe some were already covered but I mostly skimmed the topic.

Spoiler:

Firstly, about the effect of wiping out half the population and what the odds of wiping out a whole population (of city, country or planet) are related to that- it isn't acceptable to only calculate the odds of everyone getting wiped out simultaneously because beyond a certain point, society collapses entirely and many more deaths follow. It is still unlikely to lead to 100% mortality but with unexpected death on such a massive scale, I am willing to bet nearly all societies will collapse entirely. It will almost certainly disrupt the food supply for years leading to famine and will likely have other effects like bringing down the electrical grid, crippling medical care facilities, and so on.

Similarly, calculating the exact odds of these specific six (or five) Avengers surviving is the wrong way to think about it. Yes, they are the original Avengers and they are intentionally getting teamed up so the filmmakers can tell the story they want but that is... sort of a metaphysical reason and decided by omnipotent creators that don't actually play dice with the universe. From the point of view of Thanos or the Avengers themselves (except perhaps Strange), there was no expectation for these specific six people to survive so its a bit like rolling a blue and red die, seeing where they land and then announcing there was only a 1 in 36 chance for the blue one to be 3 and the red one- 5- sure, that's right but you had no particular expectation to get that result before rolling the dice and you could have made a similar statement about any other outcome.

What Strange was trying to achieve and what options he was looking for were similarly unexplained. He certainly wasn't looking specifically for a world where the core Avengers + Rocket survive, just one where Thanos gets defeated and he affected events in a way that lead to this. One thing that tells us, though, is that whatever algorithm was choosing who gets wiped out wasn't truly random i.e. Strange could forsee what events lead to certain people getting wiped out. That means that calculating the odds as independent (truly) random variables is not the right way to go- maybe bargaining for Ironman's life guarantees he survives, attacking Thanos with a specific spell keeps Cap alive but gets Spiderman erased and flipping over a rock when no one is looking leaves Black Widow around at the cost of Drax's life.

The average of all actor’s Bacon Numbers, right now, is 3.028.[…]Most actors you’ve ever heard of will have an average between 2.9 and 3.3.

My own Bacon Number is 3. Tops. Just because I know I was there alongside someone with a 2.

(Kevin Bacon himself wasn't there, but I never did any check to exclude a B#(1) person in the cast who'd actually make me a 2, too.)

And just seen the film. Took a while to get the picture-clue from the post-credits (as mentioned elsewhere) and I like some of the various theories already floated round about things-that-are-spoilers. Must say something about them when I'm caught up properly in the thread, maybe.

Soupspoon wrote:And just seen the film. Took a while to get the picture-clue from the post-credits (as mentioned elsewhere) and I like some of the various theories already floated round about things-that-are-spoilers. Must say something about them when I'm caught up properly in the thread, maybe.

It took me a second or so, but then I only really know the referent second-hand, so...

Some wag has pointed out that in Doctor Strange, the Ancient One made it clear she could not see the future past her own death. Strange sees 14 million futures including one in which the good guys win: clearly, seeing towards some point beyond the end of this movie.Inferences may be drawn.

... dustings and Spiderman not feeling very well: maybe the finger-snap actually runs around subtracting levels from people until it's killed half of them, or picks off half the level 0s, half the level 1s, half the level 2s and so on in that order, at a high frequency but not instantly.

I still think it would have been a really ironic win if THanos had snapped his figners, turned to dust and left the gauntlet at Thor's feet.

eSOANEM wrote:Or we're not in the timeline he saw where the heroes one (not that that means we're in one he saw where the good guys lost, he never said he saw every outcome, just whatever the number was).

Alternatively he may just have learnt how to use the eye better than the Ancient One could. He does seem to have a talent for rapidly learning how to use tools better than most masters.

Well...

Spoiler:

His final line - "this was the only way" - suggests that his "death" was part of his Golden Path.

It also depends why the Ancient One couldn't see beyond her death - it could be as simple as the Time Stone choosing not to answer to her beyond that period, or a side-effect of her bargain with Dormammu rather than an inherent limitation to a person's own lifetime.

Of course, if the solution does involve time travel, then Strange didn't just see possible futures, but also possible pasts, and the whole thing gets unsettling quickly.

... dustings and Spiderman not feeling very well: maybe the finger-snap actually runs around subtracting levels from people until it's killed half of them, or picks off half the level 0s, half the level 1s, half the level 2s and so on in that order, at a high frequency but not instantly.

I still think it would have been a really ironic win if THanos had snapped his figners, turned to dust and left the gauntlet at Thor's feet.

Spoiler:

Word o' God is that it's Spiderman's danger sense activating. The dusting isn't quite instant, with people watching others dust before dusting themselves, so clearly it takes place over some fairly short period of time, but in Spidey's case, he was able to innately sense it coming

ObsessoMom wrote:Just saw the season finale of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the mention of Thanos a few episodes before the finale...

Spoiler:

didn't go anywhere at all. Apparently, two extinction-level events are affecting Earth at the same time, and the Marvel characters dealing with one aren't noticeably inconvenienced by the other.

Ooooookay...

Yeah that bothered me as well. I had been thinking that maybe everything in the last four-ish episodes of SHIELD happened on the same day as Thanos' attack and concluded before the end scene of Infinity War, and the tiny SHIELD team barely had any idea what was happening with Thanos while the Avengers had no idea how big a threat SHIELD was facing since they didn't have SHIELD's future foreknowledge. But the last scene of the SHIELD finale seems to take place some time after the rest of the action, I'd want to say at least a day, and I'd think that by that point the SHIELD team would have noticed the effects of the conclusion of Infinity War.

My current theory is that the end of Infinity War will be undone with time travel, and everything else in the MCU is just going to portray things as they are after the time travel happens, i.e. ignoring the far-reaching effects of the Infinity War conclusion.

OP Tipping wrote:Some wag has pointed out that in Doctor Strange, the Ancient One made it clear she could not see the future past her own death. Strange sees 14 million futures including one in which the good guys win: clearly, seeing towards some point beyond the end of this movie.Inferences may be drawn.

Spoiler:

The Ancient One looked specifically in to her future. Not the future, just ones with her in it. She never found one that let her past that moment.

Strange looked at ones that didn’t include him.

heuristically_alone wrote:I want to write a DnD campaign and play it by myself and DM it myself.

heuristically_alone wrote:I have been informed that this is called writing a book.

But the mistranslation is angering Koreans so much that they have filed a petition on the website of the Office of the President of Korea. The petition is calling for the firing of translator Park Ji-hoon, who wrote the Korean subtitles for Avengers: Infinity War and past films like Suicide Squad, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Captain America: Civil War. As of this writing, the petition has amassed 3,835 endorsers. ‘Even for ordinary people who don’t speak English fluently, it’s easily recognizable that this translator’s English doesn’t even reach a basic level,’ according to the petition, the Korea JoongAng Daily reported. In one instance, the report stated, Nick Fury, played by Samuel L. Jackson, almost swore with the word ‘mother…’ but the Korean subtitle used the literal translation for ‘mother.’ In another scene, Doctor Strange said, ‘end game’ but the Korean translation read ‘there’s no hope.’